News

Apple quietly changes iPad Air, Retina mini batteries

Apple’s new iPads — the iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display — have quietly undergone significant battery changes from their prior incarnations, iLounge has learned. The iPad Air actually has a much smaller battery than the fourth-generation iPad — 32.4-Watt-hours compared to the previous model’s 42.5-Watt-hours; as a result, the battery should recharge faster, coming closer to the four-hour refueling times required from the iPad and iPad 2 than the five- to six-hours of the last two iPads.

Meanwhile, the Retina iPad mini is moving up to 23.8-Watt-hours from 16.3-Watt-hours in the original iPad mini—a 46% increase in battery size that will change how the new model works with external battery packs. Apple is now including a 10W charger to reduce recharging time. To read about the battery changes and more under-the-radar features in the new iPads, read our newest Ten Things You Didn’t Know article.

Comments

I don't buy it. I'm sure its a little more power efficient, especially when the display is off say, but when the display is on, I assume it's using the majority of the power. The DisplayMate tests after the iPad 3 came out showed the backlighting power requirements had DOUBLED from the iPad 2, which resulted in a battery that was 70% larger. They must have done something to improve the efficiency of the display.Posted by Glenn on 2013-10-25 16:33:42

"Somebody needs to look into what kind of display tech is in these iPads as well as how much aluminum and other things. How exactly did they do this with so little battery and so little weight?"
I think the difference is in the improved power efficiency of the A7 chip.Posted by John on 2013-10-24 01:32:22

All right, the original iPad 2's battery was 25WHr, and the bump with the retina display in the iPad 3 was to 42.5WHr. The assumption was that the new display was less efficient and most of the bump was to increase the backlight since there were more devices in the way. We were waiting on IGZO from Sharp or something to improve transmission efficiency and get back some of the weight gain.
Now we're down to 32.4WHr. Not as good as the original, but hey, we've got more pixels to draw and hey wait, how did they increase the size of the battery and yet still manage to drop the weight down to a pound?
And the iPad Mini battery goes up by 46% while the original jump to retina increased battery by 70%. Huh. Is that IGZO too?
Somebody needs to look into what kind of display tech is in these iPads as well as how much aluminum and other things. How exactly did they do this with so little battery and so little weight?Posted by Glenn on 2013-10-22 20:24:37